Conversations for Leaders & Teams
E66. Artificial Intelligence: A Game Changer in Coaching with Cory Cummings
As many practitioners are embracing AI with open arms, we must also remember the importance of privacy and ethics. In our conversation with Mr. Cory Cummings, CEO of Cummings Solutions, we learn about to the need for a personal code of ethics for coaches, potential privacy issues that may arise and of course, the significance of using data securely when using artificial intelligence. We also delve into academic research tools like chatGPT and its ScholarAI plugin to give you a clear understanding of how these tools access real-time data and enhance self-awareness. Let's not shy away from AI, but rather adapt and learn to pose the right questions. Tune in, and together let's demystify the world of AI in coaching and beyond.
Connect with Cory on LinkedIn , on his website, or email cory@cummings.solutions
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Looking for leader and team development for your organization? Contact us today!
info@belemleaders.org
Until next time, keep doing great things!
As many practitioners are embracing AI with open arms, we must also remember the importance of privacy and ethics. In our conversation with Mr. Cory Cummings, CEO of Cummings Solutions, we learn about to the need for a personal code of ethics for coaches, potential privacy issues that may arise and of course, the significance of using data securely when using artificial intelligence. We also delve into academic research tools like chatGPT and its ScholarAI plugin to give you a clear understanding of how these tools access real-time data and enhance self-awareness. Let's not shy away from AI, but rather adapt and learn to pose the right questions. Tune in, and together let's demystify the world of AI in coaching and beyond.
Connect with Cory on LinkedIn , on his website, or email cory@cummings.solutions
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Looking for leader and team development for your organization? Contact us today!
info@belemleaders.org
Until next time, keep doing great things!
Welcome to Conversations where today we have Mr Corey Cummings, an entrepreneur and coach. He is CEO of Cummings Solution, which works with individuals and organizations to identify and realize their full potential. His team also works with organizations to solve complex problems through custom technology solutions. For all you. Strengths, enthusiasts, Corey leads with Activator, Futuristic Ideation, Command and Self-Assurance. Welcome to the show, Corey. How are you today?
Speaker 2:Great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Where in the world are you coming from today?
Speaker 2:North Carolina. Right in the middle of North Carolina it's a little small town called Liberty, I think.
Speaker 1:We have three stop lights now, so we're growing a little bit, so yeah, so right in the middle of North Carolina, so today we're talking about artificial intelligence and I have been trying to understand that a little more and I know for you as a technologist and a coach, you probably have it more figured out than me, so I'm just learning about it and really going to be leaning in here and trying to have you explain to me, as well as the listeners, a little bit more about the space that it seems like is top of mind for people, and part of that is that we're confused, right.
Speaker 2:Well, I think with coaching there's a real, a very real human aspect that needs to go into coaching, right. So when you're working with a client, you're asking powerful questions, yeah, you're going through and helping them maybe understand, through assessments, some of their own personalities, their own strengths, those types of things. What's scary about AI is that you could ask the AI tell me this person's strengths and how does that apply to this person? So a lot of that analysis that we're doing manually my word manually there AI can do for you, right. So the fear is okay. If AI can do these things, if AI could ask questions contextualized, then why do you need a coach? So it's the same idea of look at McDonald's when they had the boards come out you could order on the board. Cashiers were intimidated because what about us? So what does that do for us? So I think that's kind of if I had to kind of guess and look into.
Speaker 2:Maybe causing some of that fear is where does the coaching profession go in the age of AI? Right, and then individually, there's for certain coaching task, the reality is an AI could do it better. So analyzing, for example, a Clifton Strengths assessment would be a great example. You've been doing that for years, but for some of us that haven't been doing that quite as long, being able to upload a Clifton Strength profile and then just ask questions about it, right, help have the AI kind of almost use a work-esure calculator to go and just really contextualize some of these things and give you some insights into a person based on a certain assessment. Yes, it's scary, but it's also powerful. You look at mathematicians when the calculator came out right. It's a very similar concept and I think it's exciting, but it could also be intimidating if you let it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think when I think about it, I think about AI as more partnering with me to for those tasks. Now there's a difference when we start bringing into AI into the coaching conversation whether it be apart from us, maybe in between sessions or something like that that to me, I get a little frantic about it. It's like I won't know necessarily how that's going, or will I. Do you happen to know anything about that?
Speaker 2:I think the question is regarding AI replacing a coach in a coaching session. Did I understand the question correctly?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what I've heard of is these chatbots. If you deploy these, so it's in between sessions I may show up and have a great session with you, and in between I may have a chatbot that then maybe takes over for the next few weeks until I see you again.
Speaker 2:Okay, I understand what you're saying. I think there's some power in that, particularly if you're working with a client on achieving certain goals. Just say, for example, that we have a coaching session and out of that session the client comes up with a. You work with them, they come up with a plan to go and make it up, unless you're what the thing is. But we have a four-step process we're going to go through together.
Speaker 2:Some of the value I can see is in the automation and particularly with AI. If AI knows about that plan, being able to text them encouraging messages along the way, being able to check in with them when they haven't have you done your devotionals today? We have a goal of creating a consistent habit of 30-minute devotionals every day. Having that checkup in between that, frankly, I forget to do I think is a powerful tool. I wouldn't be intimidated by that. Now. What I wouldn't appreciate if the AI then tries to do a coaching with the client, right, I think that crosses a different line, particularly when you're not in control of it or you're not aware of those things happening. But I think, as long as you can kind of understand what's going on, what the AI tasks are, it can be helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think coaches still need to have their finger on the pulse of things with their clients for sure.
Speaker 2:Sure, and then just looking at things like you know, if I'm coaching it with a client and we're working on self-awareness right, so we do an EQ assessment and we realize there's a challenge here. You know there are apps out there now that you could actually record. How am I feeling today? You know you go from green smiley to red mad face, right, and you click a button. Or if I'm, throughout the day, start feeling upset or I have some type of emotional response that to something that doesn't feel right, I can record that I click the button on the app. Why am I feeling this way? I feel blank because blank, right. So we're kind of recording this and what you could do with that data and with AI is if that data is being saved like somewhere where the coach and the client can collaborate on that data, right. So we're looking at over the past three weeks.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing a lot of red faces at 3pm on Tuesdays, right, and that's where me looking at the data.
Speaker 2:First you got to be able to collect the data, but then me eyeballing the data and trying to pull information out of it and I feed that data anonymously.
Speaker 2:Obviously we want to protect people's identities, but, hey, I have a client who has, you know this, these patterns of you know reporting how they're feeling, help me find some, make some sense of that. And that's where AI could come in and say, hey, this person on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock is a lot of orange faces, right. So now that creates a coaching moment for the coach to go in and say, okay, let's talk about that, let's talk about that 3 o'clock. Oh, I get this when I get my emails from my clients about this project update, right, so we can dig a little bit deeper into some of that. So I'm not sure if that necessarily answers the question, but when you, when you look at kind of being able to have that tool set that says, hey, I'm collecting data so that I can help move my client from point A to point B, right, and then being able to have the AI contextualize some of that so that my mind doesn't I can't look at data and very easily pull patterns out of it, but an AI can.
Speaker 1:How do you think coaches can get more comfortable using tools like this?
Speaker 2:I think you got to try them right. I mean, for example, you know I can share a few here just on my screen, so just I can. There's a couple that are very easy to go and play with. Can you see my screen?
Speaker 1:Here it can.
Speaker 2:Here's a tool right now is tied in with chat GPT, it's called askyourpdfcom. Right, you would go in, you create an account and you can actually upload documents to that site, right, askyourpdfcom? So what I've done? If you're looking at my screen for those of you that are I've uploaded several different documents my CliftonStrengths document, spiritual gifts assessment and so forth. So if I were to go in and just click new conversation within this context, I can actually have a conversation about this document with an AI. So you know what are this client's top strengths and then it's like a chatbot, right? So as it goes in, it reads the document and it tells me the strengths, where it got the information and then you know, based on this, what are some things I should be aware of when setting goals with this client, right? So it's just so the footage that can't see the screen.
Speaker 2:I asked the question. Basically, this is a CliftonStrengths results. I asked it to look at the result, read the document for me and, based on the top strengths, give me some things I need to keep in mind. How can I help them meet their goals by leaning into those strengths? And you're seeing the screen.
Speaker 2:For those that aren't, it's top three. Number one leverage their positivity. Number two engage their intellect. Number three tap into their input. Number four recognize their developer talent. So by using these strengths, if I'm working with this client, you know this particular tool, this particular AI, was able to very quickly help me pull some strategies together that I can apply in my coaching sessions. If you take this a step further, I'm not going to go too deep into it, but let's say that I wanted to say, okay, I have CliftonStrengths, but I also had the Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and I have a spiritual gifts assessment. Each of these documents have an ID that you can actually use within chat, gpt. You can say hey, based on these three assessments, give me some deeper insights into this person. So that's just kind of where some of these can tie together to be able to provide you more information and contextualize information so that you could go out and potentially do a better job coaching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. So that leads me to now that I'm seeing that. How do you know which technology which is best for you to use? Meaning, if we're talking about the developers behind it, I mean, it would be like a shot in the dark for me to go on and say, okay, I'm going to try this one. Do you have any?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one thing I would say is, you know, whenever you're working with technology databases, you really want to understand their privacy policies. So, if I'm going well, don't share your client's information in any of this. If you're going to share an assessment, be sure it's anonymized, those types of things. So there's that. But then also, you want to kind of look at how they're getting their data. So, for example, chat GPT it's a Wild Wild West, right.
Speaker 2:I can go to the chat GPT, ask it a question and it's going to find the first answer it comes to and give you a really great sounding answer. But it may be completely wrong, right? So what you don't want to do is lean on chat GPT to do certain things for you and then just assume that it's right, right, so you're going to have to validate that information. One thing that's been super useful for me when it comes to academic research, as an example, is chat GPT. They have a plugin called Scholar AI. So basically what it is, I can actually kind of show you on the screen here. So if I actually do scholar AI, it actually ties into academic databases multiple of them, right? So let's say that you know, please provide me. I'm asking chat GPT here. Please provide me with five recent academic sources that discuss increasing self-awareness Right. So we're trying to help a client do this by using chat GPT alongside the scholar AI plug-in.
Speaker 1:Thinking.
Speaker 2:So you see it's using scholar AI. So now what it's actually doing is it's going and searching that academic database, just like you would if you had access to your university's database, and so forth. So now it's finding several articles about increasing your self-awareness. You can go take out those articles. It gives you an abstract right. So I'm just for the sake of time, I can stop this thing and say, based on the sources you are finding, create a five-step process for increasing self-awareness.
Speaker 1:Certainly.
Speaker 2:it says Yep, so here's, a.
Speaker 1:Of course I will Right.
Speaker 2:So it gives you just a nice outline of some ways that we can work with our clients, potentially based on the academic research that exists today. How to go and help you, how to go and do this. So, just for those can't see it, the steps it came up with is engage in perspective talking. Participate in reflective activities. Increase knowledge on global issues, self-assessment and feedback. Engage in collaborative activities. Now, you may hate some of these, you may love some of these, you can reorganize and so forth.
Speaker 2:So, going back to the question which tools, I think chatGPT is a good one to start with. Look at some of their plugins, like ScholarAI. There are others, like Ask your PDF. I think those types of tools are probably a good starting point, but they're literally tens, thousands, hundreds of thousands of startups right now trying to leverage UI for this, this or that. So I think that when you try to get in too many of those things, I think it gets kind of dangerous. So I would stick today with chatGPT, chatgpt plugins, and then maybe, as time goes on, some of these tools get more proven. You could kind of dip into some of those.
Speaker 1:Now with chatGPT, I saw that you were using as at the 4.5 or 4.0. It's not the free version, it's the paid, correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the free version gives you some very good answers, but the paid version introduced this plugin, which I think is a game changer. So you have third parties. If you pay, it's like $10 a month. It's not super expensive, but if you pay for that, you get access to third party plugins. So ScholarAI being probably my favorite plugin that can actually tie your chatGPT session to real-time data, which is where chatGPT3 doesn't have that. So it's basically the knowledge cutoff of chatGPT3 is somewhere in 2021, I think it is. So now you're dealing with most recent two or three-year-old data, whereas with these plugins, I could go get articles from 2023 that were written and published yesterday. So that's the value that paying for the upgraded version gives you. Scholarai is just one they have, like Expedia has one. There are so many different. I looked the other day. I think there were like 40 pages worth of plugins. You can tie all this power and contextualization into real-time data, so that's really a big opportunity here.
Speaker 1:Now would you still suggest people kind of validate what it's saying, like it gave you that article. Do you just trust that that article is in fact a live article wherever it?
Speaker 2:I mean I don't. So what I do? I'm a doctoral student at Regie University, so what I do is anything that chatGPT gives me. I look it up in that database, so I kind of have another tab open that I would then paste the information that I would actually go into the article by myself. Make sure you validate. 99.9% of the time, though, it's correct. So whenever you're using these plugins now, chatgpt3 will just make stuff up. It'll create references. That looks right, uses real authors, the name looks like it probably could be a thing, and then you go look it up but it doesn't exist anywhere. So it's always good to validate that. Hey, this information is coming in is real. I have found that again using very specific chatGPT4 with scholar AI. 99% of the time it is that's correct.
Speaker 1:It's good. It's good and I'm glad to hear that you validate. Thank you. So we did talk about so. With the free version of chat GPT, that information is already old. So when we take a look at, let's say, five years down the road, what are things going to look like from your view?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's just going to get better. I mean, you look at the pace at which what chat GPT has been around a year as far as being available to the public. You look at the pace at which it's changing things. I think that accelerates over the next few years. I think what we're also going to see is potentially legislation that limits the use of AI, limits its applications.
Speaker 2:I don't think you put the genie back in the bottle. I think we're past that point. You look at even academic integrity, just like that where you have. How do professors help their students learn and identify cheating? That's a big problem, I'm sure, right now in the academic world. I don't know the answer to that, but it's not going away.
Speaker 2:So I think some mindsets are going to have to change. How do we better help our students learn, for example, in academia or in coaching, in annually looking at assessments and trying to figure out and contextualize data. It's going to be like doing math by hand, so it's being able to, five years from now, thinking coaching. You have all these different tools. The thing is going to be overwhelming the number of tools that are out there and, frankly, the coaches that are going to do well, five years from now, are the ones that are exploring and experimenting today. What's out there? How does that look? How does that apply to me? How do we maintain ethics and maintain integrity as a coach and use the tools? I don't think those answers are out there right now. I think those are the questions being asked, but I think that five years from now, the groundwork that we're doing now to put some of those boundaries around AI are going to be critical, because there's no telling where it could be five years from now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you did mention ethics. So let's go there. When we talk about technology and ethics and coaching and ethics, and it seems like it's just like you use the word wild, wild west and that's what it seems to be. So when you're thinking about artificial intelligence and ethics, what kind of bubbles up for you in that arena?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, ai is amoral, right, it's not good, it's not bad. So I think the same criteria we use today for ethics has to apply to everything that you do within AI. I think there's also a reality that it's going to be a need for personal ethics, being able to create a, even write it out. What are my personal ethics around coaching? It's going to become harder and harder to differentiate between humans and robots and AIs. I shouldn't use the term robot You'd think of Terminator but it's going to be harder to differentiate between human and AI. So I think one is eternalizing. What is my ethical code? What is my personal code of ethics?
Speaker 2:And then, specifically within coaching, some of these coaching organizations. I'll talk about them in the next few minutes. I can't think of them. I should be able to, but these coaching organizations that are providing credentials, providing training, they need to be right now. I'm sure they are creating. What are our code of ethics around AI, the use of AI? It can't be so limiting that you don't take advantage of the technology, right, but then it can't be so free that it continues to be the Wild Wild West. So I guess the way I would answer that question is twofold. One is the personal code of ethics, internalizing that as a coach. And then two is trying to get ahead of this thing now as organizations, coaching organizations that says here is our stance on AI, what we will do, what we won't do.
Speaker 1:And I also think that those codes and Bellarm is going to be ours is coming out within the next week and I think it's a work in progress. I think it's something that, as we learn more and as AI develops, and as coaches, consultants, whatever industry you end up in, I think that, as time goes on, we're going to be finding out. I mean, as a Christian, I know what my ethics, I have Christian ethics and that's my guiding light. Those are my boundaries and whatnot. But I think that, as time goes on, I think verbiage is going to be different. I think questions are going to be answered as we start diving in and start utilizing these tools and having those aha moments, and how can we then point it back to ethics, whether we are going to either be utilizing this or not, and for what reasons?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that that's another reason to not be so scared of this stuff is to really start digging in, because we want ethical people trying the stuff out, right? So if you're afraid to get in there and play with it and try it, experiment, then you don't even know the right questions to ask, right, and that's what I would encourage practitioners, scholars, get in there, play with this stuff, figure out where it's going wrong so that we can build those boundaries around it. But you can't do that if you don't touch it, if you just scared of it and don't get into it. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you did note about when we talked about how do we know what tools are best and you did mention chat, gpt and whatnot and to look at the privacy. So, when, if I were to look at a tool and look at their privacy, what might be something that would stand out to me that I would say, yes, this is something that perhaps I could use and feel good about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things is, you know, with chat GPT there's a private mode that you can go into, because, basically, chat GPT the way chat GPT works is it actually all the data that you put into it, all the inputs you put into it, become part of this library, Right? So it's as you're interacting with it. It's continuing to learn and get smarter, right? But there may be some information that you don't want out there as part of the public domain. Maybe it's proprietary information that you want it to help you analyze those types of things. So chat GPT has a mode that you can put it in where it doesn't actually share that data with the wide world, right? So that's very important and they have it. I forget exactly how you get to it, but they have documentation on what that looks like.
Speaker 2:If you don't within the privacy policy, if they don't have a data retention or a data sharing policy, then they could be selling that data, right, because you data mining it, you know taking those prompts and selling it. I think that it might be okay in certain dynamics, but particularly in a coaching relationship with a like if you don't want that, right? So I think that's privacy policies is probably one of the biggest concerns that I have Beyond that. I mean you can kind of get into them and not all these companies have documentation like this but how do you get your data? How do you? You know where do you source your data.
Speaker 2:You know chat, gpt one of the complaints that early on and still, frankly, some still an issue today is kind of the first data it comes to. You know what I mean. It assumes that's the correct data. So you know, as AI gets better, you want to kind of look for things like hey, how many sources are you looking at before you answer this question? You know those types of things. So privacy policy, where they source their data and then also how they share the data.
Speaker 1:That's a lot and I feel like people just click a button and you know they're not looking at these things. It's just well this looks cool. This looks like it'll work, or this looks like, whatever it is, and I guess that's my it's not a fear, but it's when I think about the information that it's gathering, even if it's wrong, information that the chat GPTs of the world is gathering to then send out to people, if it's learning from what their input.
Speaker 2:Then a lot of people are going to believe wrong information. I mean, you know, I think the there are a lot of people that will just buy whatever they see. But I think it's up to us to be wiser than that. Right, meaning that everything that comes out of these AI tools right, at least right now it needs to be validated. It needs to. You know. It can't replace, you know, research, it can't replace ethics, right? So I think it's just being aware of it now, use it, but then take everything with a grain of salt. I think that's how you get through the next five years. Now, I have no clue, five years from now, what all this looks like, but it's going to be harder, even harder then. So the reality is, there's no way around it. People are going to be fooled by this stuff Bad data they're just going to swallow it, and so we got to help them understand and see. Okay, I understand that you got this from here, but doesn't necessarily mean that it's real or true. Here's what is.
Speaker 1:Yes, A lot to know, a lot to learn. What do you say about? You know on social media that there's, you know, pay whatever, or it's a free course or a paid course. What do you see out there that where people should go? I mean, should they come to you?
Speaker 2:As far as like with learning AI. I mean there's so much out there I don't even know the right places to tell you to go. There are a lot of good sites out there that have been around for a while, that have taught other technologies. I can't think of you off the top of my head, but what I would say is there's a brand new site out there that's trying to teach you about AI. They want you to pay $500. Let's stay away from that. But if there are sites out there that have been teaching technology tools for the last 20 years, a plural site comes to mind as a good place that, hey, they're not just putting a website up, they have a track record of teaching, yet they have courses that are reviewed by real reviewers that you can get into and start learning a little bit about AI, about machine learning. That's a good place. I will put a shameless plug here a little bit. I mean.
Speaker 2:So I'm working on software now for coaches and one of the key things that I'm working on doing is integrating certain aspects of AI into our platform. So, just as an example of a tool that we have, we use disk driving forces and EQ for kind of our three main assessment bases, if you will. So one of the things that we've built into our tool is the ability for me, as a high D type A activator, to be able to write an email in my voice how I would say it, and then click a button and it'll actually change that wording of that email to make it more palatable for another personality. So this is an example that the tools that we're working with coaches on that's available would be available. Other things is being able to look at two personalities and look at where the conflicts, not just a generalized. Well, this type of person, Okay, based on a broader understanding of who I am and a broader understanding of who they are. If I am trying to communicate something clearly to them in this context, what's my checklist? What are the three, four things I need to remember in that conversation? So those are the types of things that we're trying to empower coaches with technology but then also put a lot of guardrails around that we have to put a little flag next to some of these features and say, hey, this is experimental, Please validate some of this information, et cetera.
Speaker 2:But we're getting a lot of positive feedback, especially for people like me who, at my patient's level is not always the highest, being able to really get summarized, my patient's tolerance is not super high, but I value accuracy and I value competence. So there are these two parts of myself that are always kind of battling within myself, but this gives me the ability when I'm coaching especially if I have any type of assessments to be able to get those key points from this 70-page document, all of which matters. So, yeah, that's something that you can reach out to us. Cummings Solutions is the website. If they want to reach out, we'd be more than happy to either, obviously, they could use the platform or we'd be happy to answer any questions coaches have about some of this stuff, for sure.
Speaker 1:Now, are those available currently for coaches? Are you still in the experimenting?
Speaker 2:I would say we're in a beta phase. We are open to new coaches coming onto the platform. At this point it would be on at this point. Just reach out to us and we'll get you on the platform. We don't have an automated way to getting coaches in. It's intentional. We want to make sure that the tools that we're putting out there are vetted. We want to make sure the features work. For all the reasons that you and I have discussed about ethics and different things. We want to take that slow. If anyone's interested, I believe my contact information would be in this in here, corey at Cummings Solutions, or just come to our website, cummings Solutions, and we have a form you could fill out. We can get in contact with you.
Speaker 1:Are you on LinkedIn? Can people reach out to you on LinkedIn?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. I think it's J Corey Cummings or something like that.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, mr Corey Cummings, your wealth of information. I appreciate you. I appreciate everything that you brought to this conversation around AI, around technology. My hope here is that somebody who was tuning in might reach out and try something and be able to not be so nervous about stepping into AI, because the truth is, a lot of the things that people are already using is AI. They just don't realize that. Right, correct. Is there any last words? Any last words from you You'd like to leave us? I mean?
Speaker 2:it's just really exciting. You know, if you let it be, this could be a really exciting time for your coaching practice. You know this is not bad. You know these are good problems to have. So I would just encourage you to step into it. You know fear is never a good driver. Okay, let's deal with reality, that's fine. Put boundaries around it. Let's really lean into this thing. I think it can really catapult the coaching industry further if we let it. So I just encourage you to try some things. Have fun doing it, that's right.
Speaker 1:All right, well, until next time, you keep doing great things and we'll see you soon.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Take care, bye-bye.
